Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

OPINION

COVID-19: Dismissal of science will lead to tragedy for our country, our state

The stakes are too high to continue with confirmation bias and ignore CDC recommendations. Embracing science is what saved Americans from prior health scares.

It's apparent that our 45th president thinks re-opening America is the only way he’ll be re-elected. In recent weeks, Trump refused to let the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention release a 17-page science-based document detailing what Americans should do to safely reopen houses of worship, schools, child-care programs and businesses. Politics before people; how perverse.

Trump’s explicit manner of purposely hiding scientific recommendations from Americans as they cope with COVID-19 displays his baseness. His callous behavior clearly violates the standard we’ve experienced from presidents since 1789.

Gov. Kim Reynolds approach to handling COVID-19 is no better than her White House mentor. On May 7, Reynolds said that Iowa is leading by example and that “we’re looking at a variety of things.” She could not explain what she meant by “things,” which is consistent with refusing to tell Iowans the specifics of her COVID-19 canary-in-the-coal-mine metric.

Why do some people reject basic scientific findings, whether the topic relates to vaccine safety, climate change or COVID-19? Research has proven people purposely ignore facts to protect all kinds of personal, religious and political beliefs. It’s known as confirmation bias.

COVID-19’s worldwide pandemic has placed life-and-death precautions and decisions at everyone’s doorstep. Trump’s refusal to work hand-in-glove with CDC officials is a first since its founding in 1946. The stakes are too high to continue with confirmation bias and ignore CDC recommendations. Embracing science is what saved Americans from prior health scares.

For those who feel that, with COVID-19, the economy is a bigger concern than health care, Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who served as the World Bank’s chief economist, offers sound advice in the New Yorker: “The key to solving the economic crisis is to reduce the fear that someone will get sick if they go to work or go shop. It’s really about building confidence.”

If Trump and Reynolds had only embraced science, put health care as a priority to build citizen confidence and trust and started on a coordinated 50-state approach on Jan. 3 when Trump first learned about COVID-19, we’d have results similar to Hong Kong (four deaths out of 7.4 million population) or Taiwan (six deaths/23.8 million population). Epidemiologists fear returning to work now will extend our pandemic for another 18 to 24 months.

Anyone who believes that this virus is fading away and that reopening America now is proper is engaged in confirmation bias while ignoring 25,000 new COVID-19 cases being reported daily. Reopening America is Trump and Reynolds' biggest gamble, rolling the dice on tens of thousands of lives.

May the scientific method — sooner than later — land on America and Iowa’s policy makers’ minds, and may subsequent CDC-based decisions permit us to regain confidence and return to safe work, school and social environments. We’ll deal with Trump’s re-election obsession on Nov. 3.

Steve Corbin is a professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. He receives no renumeration, funding or endorsement from any for-profit business, not-for-profit organization, political action committee or political party.